State Still Up The Same Creek Geographic Panel Denies Plan To Change Name Of Negro Creek

Unwilling to lose a piece of Whitman County’s black history, the Washington State Board on Geographic Names recently denied a proposal to rename Negro Creek.

“They felt that name was a very important part of reflecting the history of the area,” said Tim Greg, the board’s executive secretary. “If the name was changed, they would lose that historical reference.”

The creek was named after an African-American dairy farmer who squatted on the land in the 1800s before selling out to a white pioneer family.

On maps and papers printed before the 1960s, it was called Nigger Creek. In 1963, the U.S. Board of Geographic Names banned the use of the racial slur on all federal maps, effectively changing the name to Negro Creek.

All of the pioneer family’s deeds and legal documents still reflect the old slur, and relatives today object.

“It degrades our property,” said Leslie Mohs Paullin, 73, who lives in Woodinville, Wash.

Paullin asked Whitman County Commissioner Hollis Jamison to see if the name could be changed to Mohs Creek, after his grandparents, who are credited with building one of the county’s earliest houses and helping bankroll local teachers’ salaries. Jamison took the proposal to the state board.

The family never intended to cause a stir, said Paullin, who learned about the board’s decision Thursday.

“It would have been nice to have honored my grandparents, but we were certainly not in it for the notoriety.”

The tale, recounted in faded historical clippings, is that John Smith, sometimes called St. John, was a runaway slave who escaped from the South in the 1850s. He lived near the creek’s spring-fed headwaters and ran a small dairy. It’s unclear if Smith is his true name, an alias he used, or just what settlers called him. On the deed of sale for the 80 acres, Smith signed his name with an X.

Jerrelene Williamson of Spokane, president of Northwest Black Pioneers, urged the state board not to erase the only contemporary record of the man.

“We felt kind of good that we were able to make a difference,” Williamson said Thursday.

“I’m still hoping that somehow, some way, someone would actually find his (true) name.”

The seven-member state board said in December it would only rename Negro Creek if the new name maintained a connection to Smith.

Naming new features is more common than approving name changes, Greg said. Renaming usually only happens if a different name is in local usage or if the current name is considered derogatory.

According to a database of names kept by the U.S. Geological Survey, there are nearly a thousand geographic features named Squaw.

Dozens of other geographic names across the country stem from derogatory references to Italians, Chinese, Hispanics and other ethnic groups.

Over the past decade, the name Negro Mountain was challenged unsuccessfully in Pennsylvania.

People who opposed the change argued the peak was named after a servant killed while fighting off an Indian attack.

Like John Smith, the servant’s name has been forgotten.